Time and the Sea
To have lost a watch to the sea is troubling –
To imagine its lunar face and radium hands
Tumbled by the waves, dragged, snagged, gradually buried,
Lost to sunlight, down there all night,
And another night, and another;
Its balance winding down, its links smoothed
To meaninglessness.
A kind of death, then, in which I partake –
Or is it transformation?
Doesn’t the sea always claim such gifts from us?
Birthday watches and signet rings, a tortoiseshell comb:
They’re teased from our bodies by the inexorable
Suck and pull of twining arms and tide-wrought nets
Then proved ephemeral, with no more value
Than a salmon-pink seashell, a spit of sweet driftwood,
The base of a beer-bottle worn down to a gem.
An exchange is made, perhaps:
We lose our precious symbols only to find better ones –
Worth nothing, worth everything, they return to us silently
And wait till we notice how they’ve curled round our minds
As soft and ineffable as the way you slept
Through the last heat of the day.
